Weapons Influence

I have been playing a lot of KoTOR recently, mostly the mods that are out there, and decided to play around with weapon choices for my Jedi. KoTOR sword fighting battles in general look really good, which I hope is an inspiration for SWToR. I tried the double-blade lightsaber and found it lacking compared to the others, while single and dual-wielding was pretty badass. The class that I wanted to play in SWTOR was the Shadow Consular but after seen that they use a double-blade I have decided for the Jedi Knight.
I find the way I picked my class very lacking, so I wanted to ask the community here if weapons influence your character decisions more than the abilities the class have.

For me it was the weapons as well. I haven't even seen all the spells and abilities all the classes have. I chose to be a Jedi Knight-Sentinel simply because dual-wielding Lightsabers sounds awesome to me. And later when I saw the char progression video and when I saw that Obi-Wan look..well I was amazed . So yeah weapons did it for me

Erm, weapons haven't really influenced me. I'm pretty much always a tank in MMO's, gonna be BH/Powertech tank just because they look awesome overall with the heavy armour and helmets and that, not just the weapon.

My only restriction was that I would play a Jedi. Since the Sage doesn't even really use their Lightsaber all that much it was a none issue beyond that first desicion.

"I'll tell you something, my Tenchi, you know the carnival comes and goes. But if you wait for a while, it'll always come back to you, Tenchi."~Ryoko TENCHIxRYOKO FTW!

"The crystal is the heart of the blade. The heart is the crystal of the Jedi. The Jedi is the crystal of the Force.
The Force is the blade of the heart. All are intertwined. The crystal, the blade, the Jedi. You are one.

I would like to play Consular too, but I know in my heart that the animations are not going to look like Darth Maul. You will not see the butterfly jump, or the range of spins. There are limitations in what can be programmed. I imagine that each Consular/Inquisitor will have a 'favoured' edge of the sabre, and you'll see a few animations using the off-end for flavour. I would be very surprised if you see a parry of an attack coming from behind your character being deflected by the currently reversed end of the sabre.

They are also limited, as you'll see, by the common "homing missile" effect of projectiles that have been determined to have been a hit, but the target is moving, so it bends in the air to be seen to hit. We'll see a lot of this with deflecting blaster shots. When you succeed in deflecting the shot, but the lightsabre is already in the middle of another animation, will it seem like the bolt is sucked into the blade, as opposed to the blade moving to the path of the shot, while continuing to perform the other simultaneous action.

No, I know not to expect the impossible (which is why I fail) but I hope that we'll find relatively early on how we feel about the animation. Is it something we can live with, or will I decide to reroll.

At this point in time, I'm okay with the animation being a bit wonky, experience has told me that you quickly ignore that when in the thick of battle, when you have other things to concentrate on. It wouldn't be something I'd get worked up about, and end up changing my character (and possibly missing out on a story I'd much prefer) for it.

What if you chose Consular based on their abilities, story and character development, but then changed to Jedi Knight, and regretted it later when you found the story boring?

I imagine that each Consular/Inquisitor will have a 'favoured' edge of the sabre, and you'll see a few animations using the off-end for flavour. I would be very surprised if you see a parry of an attack coming from behind your character being deflected by the currently reversed end of the sabre.

Depends on what advanced class you choose. Sage/Sorcerer uses a single blade saber, while Shadow/Assassin uses the dual blade. I haven't seen too much of the dual blade in action as I am drawn more toward the playstyle of the sage/sorc, but deflecting melee and blaster attacks from behind with a single blade has a remarkably smooth animation.

They are also limited, as you'll see, by the common "homing missile" effect of projectiles that have been determined to have been a hit, but the target is moving, so it bends in the air to be seen to hit. We'll see a lot of this with deflecting blaster shots. When you succeed in deflecting the shot, but the lightsabre is already in the middle of another animation, will it seem like the bolt is sucked into the blade, as opposed to the blade moving to the path of the shot, while continuing to perform the other simultaneous action.

I never noticed any of this homing effect either. For one thing, blaster bolts have a very quick missile speed; if they do change trajectory mid-flight, it's hardly noticeable. Second, passive melee actions such as blaster/melee deflection are also very quick and fluid. Studying it closely, I would surmise that when a deflection roll is successfully made by the defender, the blaster bolt has already selected its flight path and landing point relative to the character's model, and all the lightsaber has to do is move to meet it at that predetermined point to deflect it away.

Overall, the smooth flow of melee animations is the one thing that surprised me the most, in a good way. I was expecting everything else to be amazing, and it was, but I was very impressed by how clean they've managed to make melee, especially lightsabers.